The Untended Garden in March!
Excuse the weeds, but the bumbles bees like them.
~Garden and Poster by Goly Ostovar, AGC Member
Garden Poster
Tag Archives: gardening
Backyard Birds: Lesser Goldfinch
Lesser Goldfinch: Lesser Goldfinches are in great abundance in the Rogue Valley where they are year-around residents. Lesser Goldfinches forage on grains and seeds so they are often seen in weedy fields, steam side trees, bushy thickets by open fields and in the treetops by open areas. Their habitat is lower valleys to high in the mountains. They are very common in the suburbs during the winter when they migrate to lower elevations for food. Lesser Goldfinches are regular visitors to backyard feeders where they eat black oil sunflowers seeds, hulled sunflower seeds, nyjar thistle seeds and suet.
Photo by Richard Griffin, Flickr
Backyard Birds: Chestnut-backed Chickadee
Chestnut-backed Chickadees: These birds frequent backyard bird feeders regularly where they eat black oil sunflower seed, hulled sunflowers seeds, suet, nyjar seeds and some fruit, but 65% of their diet is made up of insects and other arthropods, including aphids, caterpillars, spiders, leafhoppers, tiny scale insects and wasps. Chestnut-back Chickadees are found up and down the West Coast and in the Pacific Northwest. Their habitat is dense wet coniferous forests of Douglas firs, Monterey pine, Ponderosa pine, Sugar pines, White firs, Incense-cedar and Redwoods. But, while these social noisy little birds prefer dark wet forests they have moved into cities where they utilize stands of willows and alder trees along streams, madrone trees, shrubbery along the edges of oak woodlands and ornamental shrubs in parks and gardens.
Photo by Kathy Munsel, ODFW https://myodfw.com/wildlife-viewing/species/chickadees-and-nuthatches
Article by: Carlotta Lucas, AGC Member
Fungi Fun
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October Color
In the Garden: October 22
Photos by: Carlotta Lucas, AGC Member
‘Lasagna’ Sheet Mulching
Here’s how to create a lasagna bed, also called sheet mulching:
- Start in fall so the bed has all winter to start decomposing.
- Cut grass as low as possible. Or start a lasagna garden on top of an old planting bed.
- Loosen soil with a digging fork to increase aeration. Even punching holes in the ground will work.
- Remove weeds.
- Build a raised bed frame or just mound up the layers of organic material into an unframed bed.
- Put a layer of cardboard overlapped an inch or two and water it.
- Cover with 2-inch layers of green organic material like grass clippings, fresh plant debris, fresh animal manure and food scraps that provide nitrogen and brown materials like dry leaves, wood chips, straw and shredded newspaper that are carbon sources. Repeat layers until the bed is about 18 inches.
- Top off with a 2- to 6-inch brown layer; thicker if you want to plant right away.
- Create beds only wide enough to reach into the middle and create paths lined with straw to walk on so soil doesn’t get compacted.
- Lasagna beds will shrink as materials decompose and may need refreshed layers each year.
- Using transplants is easier in no-till gardening systems; the mulch layer is easier to transplant directly into rather than direct seeding, especially for small-seeded crops like lettuce and broccoli. To transplant, use a trowel or other tool to make holes large enough to plant into. If directly seeding into the bed, pull back the mulch layer and smooth over the surface layer with a rake before seeding.
Instructions from OSU Extension website https://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/no-till-garden
The term “Lasagna Gardening” was coined by Patricia Lanza, who wrote a book on the subject in 1998. The illustration above is from her book.